U.N. Report: 'Condemnation is Insufficient' for South Kordofan Atrocities
Posted by Amanda Hsiao on Jul 14, 2011
Since fighting broke out in the volatile Sudanese state of South
Kordofan on June 5, accounts trickling out from the largely sealed-off
war zone have attested to the Sudanese army, or SAF, and other
affiliated government forces killing and committing other acts of
violence against its civilians. Information out of the area continues
to remain scarce and difficult to confirm.
In the most comprehensive cataloguing of gross human rights violations
committed in the conflict so far, a June UNMIS human rights report
seen by Enough provides gruesome details of brazen executions of
civilians, intimidation and assault of U.N. personnel, and forced
returns and displacement of populations, all acts that may constitute
war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Many of the report’s findings point to the deliberate targeting of
civilians because of their political and/or ethnic affiliations. The
ranks of the SPLA in South Kordofan are largely filled with Nuba, and
many Nuba support the SPLA’s political wing, the SPLM. The report
documents government forces summarily executing, abducting, detaining,
and abusing civilians suspected of being SPLM sympathizers, bombing
densely-inhabited civilian areas, and laying land mines in known SPLM
neighborhoods. The report notes that witnesses and victims say that
government forces have a list of Nubans wanted for being sympathetic
to the SPLM/A; another incident in the report says U.N. staff being
detained were “shown photographs of U.N. national staff and requested
to confirm whether they were inside UNMIS compound.”
Here are excerpts from the report:
On 8 June, a man was shot several times and killed in full public
view at the Kadugli Police Hospital. He had gone to the hospital in an
attempt to try to find his three missing children whom he believed
were inside the premises. The victim was an active SPLM member and sat
on the SPLM elections committee. According to eye witnesses, two other
persons were also shot and killed in front of the Police Hospital in a
similar manner.
A young woman of Nuban descent informed UNMIS Human Rights that
she was arrested in the vicinity of the Kadugli Police Headquarters on
20 June. During her detention she was interrogated about her work with
an international NGO and accused of being a SPLM supporter while
police beat her with fists, sticks, rubber hoses and electric wires.
UNMIS Human Rights noted the bruises and scars on the woman’s neck and
back consistent with her statements.
On 8 June, UNMIS Human Rights witnessed the movement of four armed
men (two armed civilians and two Central Reserve Police) carrying
weapons in and out of the UNMIS Protective Perimeter without any
intervention from the UNMIS peacekeepers guarding the premises. The
armed men conducted identity checks on the IDPs. Eyewitnesses
interviewed reported that the armed men abducted three IDPs from the
vicinity of the UNMIS Protective Perimeter on suspicion that they were
supporters of the SPLM.
“The attacks on UNMIS, its staff and assets are so egregious that
condemnation is insufficient,” the report states. Multiple incidents
in which U.N. staff were assaulted, detained, threatened, or even
killed, were documented in the report:
On 8 June, an UNMIS independent contractor (IC) was pulled out of
a vehicle by SAF in front of the UNMIS Kadugli Sector IV Compound in
the presence of several witnesses, while UN peacekeepers could not
intervene. He was taken around the corner of the compound and gunshots
were heard. Later he was discovered dead by UNMIS personnel and IDPs.
Several sources confirmed that the victim was an active SPLM member.
On 7 June, an UNMIS truck was stopped at a checkpoint near the
UNMIS Sector IV compound. Three of the ten IDPs who had been assisting
UNMIS personnel with loading supplies for IDPs were pulled out of the
truck and beaten up by SAF personnel. An UNMIS staff member who
attempted to intervene was threatened at gunpoint by one of the
soldiers who asked him “do you want to stay or leave”. The UN
personnel drove off with the seven remaining IDPs. The fate of the
three IDPs remains unknown.
In one incident, after U.N. military observers on their way to verify
a mass grave were detained, interrogated, searched, and forced to
strip by SAF, they were subject to a mock execution:
A SAF Captain instructed the UNMOs to line up and be killed. He
removed the safety of his AK-47, and just as he was about to point the
weapon towards the UNMOs, a SAF Major entered the room and ordered him
not to shoot. Immediately following the intervention the officer with
the gun shouted “UNMIS leave Southern Kordofan, if not we will kill
you if you come back here.” The team was released and told not to
return back to Kadugli town.
As the report itself notes, the 19-page document is nowhere near
exhaustive, with one of the biggest revelations being that the true
scale and extent of violence is only beginning to surface. In one
alarming account in the report, an UNMIS staff member attests to
seeing over 150 dead Nuba scattered on the grounds of the military
compound where he was being detained by the Sudanese army. The report
says, “Some of the bodies appeared to have bullet wounds and he
reported a large quantity of blood on the ground. [The UNMIS staff
member] reported a SAF soldier told them they had all been shot dead.”
Just today, the Satellite Sentinel Project provided the first images
of what appear to be mass graves and body bags. An independent and
comprehensive investigation into the violations in South Kordofan that
brings to account those most responsible is a key recommendation of
the report.
It is also important to note that the U.N. report comes down clearly
on Sudanese government forces as the main perpetrators of the abuses,
a message that leaders and policymakers around the world who continue
to toe a line of moral equivocation should take heed of:
Although both parties to the conflict have engaged in acts against
civilians throughout the course of the recent conflict in Southern
Kordofan (…) it is the conduct of the SAF [that] has been especially
egregious. Instead of distinguishing between civilians and combatants
and accordingly directly their military operations only against
military targets, the SAF and allied paramilitary forces have targeted
members and supporters of the SPLM/A, most of whom are Nubans and
other dark skinned people.
(…)
The International Community cannot afford to remain silent in the
face of such deliberate attacks by the Government of Sudan against its
own people. If the current conduct of the SAF, especially the aerial
bombardments, does not stop, it will dissipate the Nuban population in
Southern Kordofan.
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